


the ocean sings for the land it lost

by galta (yujael)



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Merpeople, Angst with a Happy Ending, Gen, Not Really Character Death, Some angst, i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-17
Updated: 2017-06-17
Packaged: 2018-11-15 07:02:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11225757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yujael/pseuds/galta
Summary: He finds that he cannot quite recall most things from before - over time he can summon flashes of scenery and glimpses of faces, but nothing concrete. Names and words escape him; the tattoo on his arm and the mark on his shoulder give him nothing. Later, all he knows for certain is his name, and that he does not belong in these deep waters. Dim memories and faint songs call him elsewhere. So, he stays long enough to learn how to survive and then drifts away.





	the ocean sings for the land it lost

The way Hanzo dies is simple, in the end, and not by any one person’s hand. Not his own, not his brother’s, not an agent of Talon’s. They are on a rescue mission at an old factory built into a cliff and over the water - an abandoned facility turned prison by Talon to hold a group of particularly vocal anti-Talon scientists. In, out. The heroes Overwatch save the day.

Hanzo perches half way up a signal tower in the rain. He does not consider himself a hero. He only serves to pick off enemy agents from the rescuers as they bring the hostages to safety. In, out. His skills will see that the heroes take the day.

At the end, something rocks the entire facility. An explosion lights the cliff below them for a few seconds before everything not built into the ground starts to fall away into the churning water below. One last hurrah. They have everyone but themselves - their snipers and their rear defense, who scramble over the widening gap onto stable land just in time - 

At the end, something catches Hanzo’s ankle before he can leap - a chain that wraps around his leg and pulls him with it as it’s dragged down by something much heavier than he is strong. 

McCree, just over the gap, hears him shout through the wind and rain and turns - and can only look on with an outstretched hand and a look of horror as Hanzo is dragged down with everything else. It is among the last things Hanzo sees before he finds himself in the dark water, sinking fast and unable to breathe. He struggles, tries to free himself from the chain that has crushed his ankle, tries to find the surface, but finds only cold darkness and a lungful of water. 

It’s simple, in the end. The pain fades, and he drifts.

\--

Stormbow is recovered, pulled out of the water slamming against the cliff by McCree. Pharah fights the ocean currents to search the water. Genji, unable to go fully into the water himself, stands watch at the top of the cliff, silent and still as stone. 

They return to Gibraltar empty handed but for Stormbow. Genji remains silent, holding the damaged weapon in meditation for an entire night. His face beneath the visor feels as if it could burn but he doesn’t remove it. In, out, His brother might have been a hero in the end. He prays for peace for a weary soul. 

\--

McCree pours a drink after handing Stormbow over. He reconsiders his decision to add ice but drinks it anyway out of respect.

\--

The water never calms, but the rubble settles. Deep underwater, the ocean will grow on it in time. Deep underwater, a quiet song drifts in the waves, guiding memories in the currents.

Deep underwater, he remembers a loud voice singing along to words he can’t parse. He remembers an echoing whistle in the morning. He remembers a gentle humming in the evening. 

He isn’t alone when he wakes up. Someone floats above him, watching with pure black eyes as he blinks and tries to lick his lips over sharp teeth. He thinks they might be singing, but he cannot be sure if the tune comes only from them, even when he turns his head.

Later, he learns that they can sing and speak simultaneously. 

Later, he doesn’t question his own long tail and fins, only that they do not glow the same way as the others do (he learns that they will, in time).

Later, during his clumsy attempts to learn to swim properly, he cannot quite recall if he knew how to swim well before. He finds that he cannot quite recall most things from before - over time he can summon flashes of scenery and glimpses of faces, but nothing concrete. Names and words escape him. The tattoo on his arm and the mark on his shoulder - both distorted by new and sensitive fins - give him nothing.

Later, all he knows for certain is his name, and that he does not belong in these deep waters. Dim memories and faint songs call him elsewhere. It happens often, he is told. They know he’ll leave eventually and wish him luck. 

Hanzo stays with the shoal that found him and breathed a new life into him long enough to learn how to survive, and then he thanks them once and drifts away. 

\--

Genji doesn’t stay long, after. He participates in one more mission and then returns to the Shambali in Nepal, this time searching for a different sort of peace. McCree sees him off, the rest of the team wishes him well. Angela is the one who keeps in regular contact with him.

A few months later she tells them that Genji is on his way back, this time with a friend. Zenyatta is an omnic who radiates peacefulness and is as wise as he is playful. Genji seems better for it, and Overwatch accepts Zenyatta among them like an old friend.

Neither Genji nor Zenyatta promises permanence when they arrive, but they still promise to help as much as they can. Genji’s skills back with them - even temporarily - is a relief, and Zenyatta is no pushover himself. He doesn’t fill the hole that was left, exactly, but his presence is welcome nonetheless. 

Stormbow remains cared for in Nepal.  

\--

He doesn’t have much of a sense of time at first. He doesn’t know how long he slept before, and he often lost track of time during what he can only assume to have been the several weeks after he woke. 

He remembers a deep voice and warm laughter. Pink trees, sunny cliffs, and glittering water. He doesn’t know how old any of the memories are. Most water glitters above the surface, but he knows there’s more to it than that. There’s more to the laughter, the quick flashes of colour.

He drifts, trying to find a place that seems familiar.

Eventually, he finds islands that give him pause. The shore is lined with busy cities for miles, but dotted among them, even from a distance, he can see pink swaying in the wind. He can’t get close to them, but seeing them helps him remember an old song, a low humming that he can just hear as he closes his eyes and sleeps. 

He sings as much of it to himself as he can recall - on and on as each round brings forth new notes, hoping that as he recalls the song something else will come with it.

He hopes for a memory. Instead, as his singing continues night after night, new voices join in. His singing attracts another shoal. A small group finds him, curious to meet an unfamiliar face. He knows none of them, and none know him. It’s a bit of a letdown.

But they tell him about the area. The islands here are all part of one country, one that he thinks he must have lived in before. The cherry trees, the dragon winding down his arm, the songs - a few things click together. He remembers a face a little like his, a home somewhere near the mountains. 

The shoal offers him a place with them, but Hanzo hesitates. Home feels like the right word to describe this place, but it isn’t enough. There aren’t any names yet, and there are still more songs that tug at him at night, ones that don’t fit this place. He has more searching yet to do. 

In the morning he parts ways with the shoal again and puts the islands behind him.

\--

Two years along, Gibraltar is more lively. Cleaner, and somehow bigger. They have new heroes pitching in with Overwatch’s global efforts, big and small as they are. McCree is still there, when not deployed. 

He’d considered leaving, at first. But there’s no justice in that to the memories he’d be leaving behind this time. And Genji had eventually come back.

So he’d stayed. Most nights he takes a flask and walks as much of the perimeter he can without having to climb half a dozen ladders. The silence and the cool air are a blessing on desert worn skin. 

One night, though, he swears he hears singing. Alone and tipsy, he dismisses it. Echoes can still reach him from the barracks.

But the singing continues, and not from any building that he can discern. It’s as if the wind is carrying the sound to him from somewhere much farther away - and there he pauses, half turned towards Watchpoint Gibraltar’s quiet cliffs. The tune is familiar, he thinks. Too dim in his memory for him to name or follow confidently, but he knows he must have heard it somewhere. Somewhere under the waves below - he wonders if going to them would jog his memory.

But he isn’t that drunk or that tired. 

But the singing doesn’t stop, either, and no one else owns up to it.

It’s a fine summer night when he leaves his flask next to his bed and pries open the old entrance to one of the Watchpoint’s hidden escape route. It’s unmarked, opening to a little-known passage that leads down, down, down, all the way to the nearly non-existent shore down below. 

The lower he goes, the louder the singing becomes. 

\--

His travels take him many places, most of them unfamiliar from the water. Occasionally he comes across another shoal, or another lone swimmer drifting as he is. Some are searching for clearer waters than these or asking about chilly shores and high mountains. He asks about a warm place with gold cliffs in the evening. 

The search takes him far. A clear sunset will paint many places gold. Only a few jog his memory, though.

Eventually, he finds a place that gives him pause. The cliffs are high and worn smooth, and the shore below is rocky and dangerous, giving him plenty of spots to hide while he contemplates the large buildings above. It’s dim and rainy when he arrives, but it’s the towers that make him stop - they make him think of warm wind and a flash of silver and green. A face familiar to him, on the edges of his dreams. 

He cannot possibly climb all the way there, though, and there is no shoal to inform him about this place either. But he is here. He isn’t sure if this place is home either, but there is  _ something _ -

He settles near the shore, well hidden from the ships that pass by periodically, and sings. A whistling tune echoes in the back of his mind, slow and rhythmic like the water under the setting sun and he turns it into song as best he can. He can’t see over the edges of the cliffs, can’t tell if there is anyone to hear him, but he sings nonetheless. He sings and sings, night after night if only to smooth out the ragged edges of what memories he’s managed to recover.

He sings, letting the call float on the wind until one night, something finally responds. Not another shoal this time, curious about the tired singing. Instead, he hears gravel crunching, small rocks shifting as something comes closer from the shore. He still sings as a human man comes into view; tall, broad, walking along the cliff wall with eyes searching the water, guided by moonlight and a small light in one hand. 

Hanzo still sings as the man finally spots him and comes to a halt, lifting the brim of his hat and staring at Hanzo first with confusion, then with such an expression of grief and disbelief that it nearly brings Hanzo’s breath from his chest. 

He stops singing and stares from the water. A glimpse of red, a hearty laugh, a sharp, smoky scent - he knows, Hanzo  _ knows _ -

“You ain’t real,” the man says, half choked, shaking his head. 

A strangled sound nearly slips from Hanzo’s lips, wordless and angry and undignified.  _ I am real _ , he wants to say. He’s searched for so long and found so little, and  _ now _ -

“Wait, please,” he calls before the man can retreat. The man hadn't moved before, but now he’s still as stone. Hanzo pulls himself from the small nook between the rocks jutting out of the water. The water is too shallow here to swim properly, so he pulls himself from rock to rock until he can almost reach out and touch dry land. The man doesn’t move away. Only his eyes shift, flicking from Hanzo’s face to his shoulders, his arm, from his fins to his glowing tail. He always returns to Hanzo’s face. “We have met, haven’t we?”

The man stares down at him, mouth opening and closing like a fish’s even as nothing comes out. 

“We have,” Hanzo says. He starts to sing again, quietly. Just a hum under his breath. “I know it.”

For a moment the only sound is Hanzo’s humming, a tune he no longer tries to put words to. Then the man lifts one hand and removes his hat, holding it to his chest as he slowly drops to his knees. 

“Hanzo,” he says, heavy and sure. Hanzo’s heart soars, and if the man is startled by the crescendo in his song then he hides it well. “By God, we thought you were dead.”

\--

Watchpoint Gibraltar is uncharacteristically tense when Genji returns from a month-long hunt for anti-Omnic extremists in western Canada. It’s quiet, but at the same time, he senses something about to burst with just a single touch. Whether it’s excitement or horror, he doesn’t know. The team greets him with relieved faces and something else, barely restrained.

He almost asks the moment he arrives, but despite the early hour, he is jetlagged and tired from trekking in the mountains. He chooses to sleep instead and resigns himself to resolving the tension later, possibly with his own blade since it seems so thick.

He dreams of old songs and memories that he’d promised Zenyatta he would not linger on, even years along.

It’s dark when he wakes again, and McCree is standing above him, shaking his shoulder.

“Can it not wait until morning?” Genji groans, already rolling away. 

“It could,” McCree replies. Something in his voice gives Genji pause. “But you’ll wanna see this. We’ve been waiting for a couple weeks now for you to get back, too.”

“See what?”

McCree tugs his shoulder gently. “I’ll show you.”

Genji isn’t sure what surprise the team seems to have set up in his absence could be. His birthday has already passed, and there is no anniversary near, not even -

But McCree is persistent, and so Genji sighs and follows him outside and across the base. He doesn’t say where they’re going or who else will be there. Instead, he whistles, and it takes a few moments for Genji to realize that he’s whistling along to a faint tune that seems to carry to them on the very wind from somewhere Genji cannot discern. 

“You are acting very strange,” Genji says as McCree opens an unmarked door, revealing stairs and a long tunnel down. McCree just nods and keeps going. Down, down, down. The singing is much louder when they go through another door at the bottom and step onto the shore. There, Genii stops. He recognizes the song from his childhood, now. And the voice - he could swear -

“What is this about, McCree?”

McCree stops a few steps ahead. “There’s just something you should see. I don’t know an easy way of explaining it.”

There’s a weight in Genji’s chest, but McCree is earnest. He points, and claps a heavy hand on Genji’s shoulder as Genji goes. Alone now, Genji walks until he spots a figure among the rocks in the water. And for once, Genji finds that he cannot move.

It looks like a man, but with a long tail and fins that glow a soft blue. He isn’t facing Genji, for which Genji is both glad and not. He cannot see the man’s face as he sings to the sky, but Genji can see the tattoo on his arm, slightly distorted by a translucent fin but still unmistakably the image of a dragon curling from shoulder to wrist.

It can’t be. _ It can’t be  _ \- 

Genji’s breath escapes him in a wheeze and the man turns, startled - and for a few painful seconds nothing passes between them but wide stares and soulful singing. 

_ It is, it is  _ \-  

And Hanzo is the one to move first, moving over the rocks closer and closer, looking at Genji with a fragile smile - tired, sad, but most of all  _ hopeful _ , a mirror of Genji himself, who still cannot quite find his breath underneath it all.

And his voice is rougher than it used to be, despite the smoothness of his singing - which continues even as he speaks - but it is definitely Hanzo’s, as it was before that rainy night. 

“I’m here,” he says. “I’m real, brother; I’m here.”

And Genji does not care about how wet and slippery Hanzo is, or that he has a glowing tail instead of legs, as he staggers ungracefully to the water and drops down to wrap his arms around his brother. Alive,  _ alive _ \- he wants to ask how, wants to ask many things, but as Hanzo carefully, almost hesitantly returns the hug, Genji can only think one thing.

“Truly, I should have known best that you would not die so easily, brother.” 

**Author's Note:**

> This was fueled by my desire for more mer aus and also some angst, also so that I could work on getting back into writing. I was going to do that earlier but then there was the anniversary event. I hope you enjoyed it :)


End file.
